It Could Happen Here - Assassination Attempts on Elected Democrats in New Mexico

Episode Date: January 19, 2023

Robert sits down with New Mexico activist Lucas Herndon to discuss the recent assassination attempts against Democratic politicians.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by

an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Welcome to It Could Happen Here, a show about a bunch of shit, actually. But our core is collapse and political violence in the United States. That's where we got our bones. And today we're getting back to basics. We're going into the roots. Those of you who live in New Mexico are probably broadly familiar with the kind of basics of this story. Many of you probably will have heard aspects of this, but there have been a series of shootings that took place in December of last year and January of this year at the homes of two state legislators and two county commissioners. No one was injured, thankfully,

but this was obviously something that was scaring the hell out of a lot of people, liberals and people on the left in New Mexico over the last several weeks because they were clearly politically motivated. New Mexico has had shootings at protests and its share of the political violence that has swept a large chunk of the country. And this seemed like a real scary years of lead style escalation. a real scary Years of Lead-style escalation. Very recently, within the last couple of days of us recording this, it was announced that the police had brought in the guy who was responsible for organizing this. He did not carry out the shootings himself. His name is Solomon Pena, and he was a former Republican candidate for local office who hired four men in order to shoot at the homes of elected Democrats. Those are the basics of it. The arrest warrant affidavit says that Pena

intended to cause serious harm or cause death to the occupants inside their homes, which seems pretty credible based on what we know objectively about what happened. It's also worth noting that Pena had donated repeatedly in the past to Lyndon LaRouche, which I'm sure we'll get into a little bit later. But I want to introduce my guest for this episode who knows the story much better than I do. A local New Mexico based activist, Lucas Herndon. Lucas, how are you doing today, buddy? I'm doing good, man. Glad to be back, sort of. Yeah, really glad to have you back. You've been on the show before.

I'm just going to kind of let you take it from here now that I've sort of laid out the bones of it. Yeah, thanks. And just a couple of clarifying points, which only because things have been moving very quickly today. This is the day after he was arrested. very quickly today um this is the day after he was arrested there is actually now evidence put out from the apd that um pena himself uh was in the car and attempted to fire at least one of the targets apparently he had an ar-15 that quote unquote jammed it didn't stop that shooting from occurring. His accomplice, uh, who is unnamed at this time,

at least to our knowledge, uh, did fire a Glock out of the car during that, that, I mean, so the, there was still a shooting that happened. Yes.

But it is worth noting that he was not just the mastermind, but also an active participant, at least according to what we know today. Yeah. It looks like the weapon that was used was a tan and black Glock with a drum magazine, or at least the drum was seized at the thing. It doesn't really matter. But yeah, so I'm interested kind of first in,

if you want to walk us through how you became aware that these shootings had happened and how you would kind of characterize the impact it had on the community around you, because this obviously is intensely frightening and is the kind of thing most of us who've been paying attention have been worried about happening for quite a while. Right, exactly that. Yeah. So, you know, in the political nonprofit world, which I work in professionally, it's not uncommon for

the whole movement sort of takes the last part of December off for the holidays. So unfortunately, there was sort of not a lot of eyes on stuff in the latter part of December. But as soon as we got back to work on the 3rd of January, a series of events happened where there was a realization that there were shootings that happened at different elected officials houses. Right. And it turns out or it looks like that the the cops were just starting to put it together themselves. But it came from the fact that the first two targets were at the time seated county commissioners in bernalillo county um just for extra added confusion um one of those targets was she finished her term at the end of the year so she's now she's not technically sitting as a commissioner anymore

just just for clarity um but then over the course of those weeks that we were all out, there were also then shootings at one of the state senators' homes. And then in January, there was also shootings at the campaign office of the gentleman who is now our state attorney general. Within our sort of movement of people that work on you know political things we were all gearing up for the session uh our in new mexico our legislative session kicks off a 60-day term uh it actually started today on january 17th and it became clear to all of us that this was happening and we started you know talking amongst ourselves and we we did know talking amongst ourselves and

we we did find out that at that point the cops had started piecing it together they were piecing together pieces of information it turns out that after the shooting on the third um the only other named accomplice so far this guy jose trujillo was arrested uh 40 minutes after the shooting um apd because of um ongoing issues with um crime in the in the city of albuquerque has like a quick response like system setup that like tracks gunfire and yeah so they were able they were able to track this guy down um he was driving a car that was registered to penya um and uh there were other connections obviously that the you know cops put things together and then yeah and they executed the search warrant yesterday there was a swat situation it It sounds like it was preventative more than anything. But some of the stories that have come out is that he was reluctant out a series of shootings, not surprised to hear that. Now, I'm kind of curious, was there a community response prior to sort of Pena being exposed and arrested?

Was there a community response kind of reacting to the fact that there was an escalating series of shootings targeting local elected leaders? there were was an escalating series of shootings targeting local elected leaders yeah so uh the company i work for progress now new mexico we put out a series of tweets um basically as soon as we had started putting two and two together um you know we we were careful to say that this appears politically motivated we don't have evidence, but it's hard to not put those two things together. We at Progress Now and me specifically having worked here for a very long time, I have been tracking political violence here in the state for a while. And I've I've I've been part of it in the sense that I was threatened and doxxed in 2020, as were some of my other colleagues. And so, you know, these things hit close to home. Right. And on the and on the one hand, it's it's tough to see these things as anything but political violence for for those of us like you, Robert, that like we see it all the time because we're paying attention to it.

On the other hand, there is unfortunately a lot of gun violence in Albuquerque. And, you know, so there were there were some pushback, people thought, Oh, no, this is just, you know, there's just that much gun violence, quote, unquote. But that's, you know, that was a silly premise. Honestly, this was very clearly politically motivated. And now that we have a person to attach this to, and we can look at his social media history and, you know, stuff we found in Telegram, stuff on his Twitter. It's so clear. I mean, he we just actually even today, right before we got on here, we just published another Telegram piece that we found on our Twitter that he threatened the secretary of state after he lost his election um telling saying that he she should quote unquote hang until she's dead so yeah i mean he's this has

been an ongoing part of his um ideology for a while you know he has a lot of pro maga uh posts um a lot of big lie you know tainted, you know, rhetoric all over his motivated, but at a certain point it becomes kind of reasonable and, and safe to make that assumption. And I think also necessary when you're trying to, to protect a community and get people prepared for the likelihood that they're going to encounter violence. Um, we've also had though cases where like it is impossible to know, you know, we, know. We had a series of attacks on power plants last year. We still don't know who did the ones in North Carolina or who did the ones in Portland. But it turned out that the folks who did that Christmas Day attack on power substation in Washington state were just robbing a place, right? Effectively non-political. So it is kind of impossible to get 100%. Has this altered at all your kind of feelings on when and at what sort of point do we start

raising the alarm? Yeah, you know, I mean, I think that Progress Now, you know, my organization that I work with, we, as soon as we heard something was afoot, we put out the word. For us, it was a matter of safety as as people who've lived through it ourselves um this was a time that the community needed to be aware of these things and be thinking about it um and and to be honest that you know our our group discussion about it was it was better to be safe than sorry if if somehow this wasn't political or if it was maybe personalized or something like that at these legislators and lawmakers rather than it being overtly just political ideology,

that would be we could walk it back. But again, it was for us, we made the decision that no, this information needs to be out there. We have especially as we were gearing up for the session there was just there's too much on the line um you know up until a couple years ago at our state legislature which we call the roundhouse because it's a big round building um up at the roundhouse you could carry firearms into the building um it was just a sort of a remnant of new mexico's sort of uh wild west days i guess yeah yeah yeah but uh but uh with the with the rise of with the rise of

far right related violence and you actually did have armed insurrection minded people showing up um in and around january 6th um but even before that really during during the 2020 lead up with a lot of the maga rallies the trump trains and all that the the legislature passed their own you know rule saying you couldn't bring guns into the into the legislature and that was upped even further this year by the installation of uh detectors. So but that's new. But that was directly related to this, this this looming threat over over lawmakers in the state. They didn't know if they were going to have anybody in custody before things started today.

And so the legislature made that decision for themselves that they were going to institute that policy and have metal detectors on the way in. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. And as I understand it, it's still the law in the state of Texas, actually, that you can be armed inside the Capitol building. I certainly had been during protests years ago. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora.

An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast Sniffy's Cruising Confessions.

Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose.

This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge, and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people.

I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry, and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. It's interesting watching kind of the simultaneous adaptation by the law enforcement, by kind of elected and sort of

standard centrist Democrats, and by the left in different ways to this escalation in political violence and kind of the acceptability on the right of using the threat or the practice of violence to try to push for political ideology, because everyone is kind of adapting in real time to it. I'm wondering, how are you kind of looking at this from the left? How are you feeling about the way in which the actual state has responded so far? Yeah, it's complicated. So the tradition in New Mexico is on the opening day of the legislature, the governor gives the state of the state address. And I covered that earlier today. One of her key points, and she tied it to this very issue, was she is pushing as a priority bill this year a quote unquote assault weapons ban.

this year a quote-unquote assault weapons ban uh there is also another legislator who is pushing um a what we would call a standard capacity but what they call a high capacity magazine ban and you know and then there's some other ones that are maybe a little bit more um reasonable like safe storage um which is something that i can get behind yeah you know and i i think there's a couple of things here to consider. And, you know, and it gets complicated because people on the right have dominated the conversation about guns and gun control for so long that it's hard to have well-intentioned conversations from the left, I find. And yeah, I would agree.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and yeah, I would agree. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, speaking personally as a gun owner and as somebody who has, um, things ever got real bad, I would, you know, we would call each other. Being that guy, I obviously have very strong feelings about being told by the state that I don't have a right to defend myself with the same types of weapons that I know the other side has. Right. So I think the answer, you know, sorry, that was a little bit of a roundabout but the yeah the point is that um the person who perpetrated this um mr pena it's unclear but he is a felon and um there is some hay being made about um how he and others may have possessed guns and you know the reality we know is that it is not

hard or difficult um to try to get guns one way or the other and so and and no you can just drive across the border to texas for one thing i mean right or arizona yeah yeah or arizona this guy was already what was in fact restricted from being able to own any kind of firearm. Right. Right. And and so it is hard to be somebody who works in the political left. And I work on a number of policy issues. My my day to day work focuses more on energy issues. focuses more on energy issues. But, but, you know, but I, I have been doing this work long enough that I, I step in whenever there's stuff like this happening and cover it for, for, for my work, but it's, yeah, it's it's going to be interesting to see, you know, I, I don't know if there's the political will in the state, New Mexico even, you know, moderate Democrats are,

are hunters, are recreational shooters. And I think that there's, you know, moderate Democrats are, are hunters are recreational shooters. Um, and I think that there's, you know, there is some strong feelings about gun violence. We, there was a very tragic death, um, involving children last year during our legislative session, um, where, where I, uh, a middle schooler, I believe maybe a high schooler, a kid either way, took a pistol from his parents' sock drawer, basically, and shot a kid. And so again, safe storage is one of those things that I think most people generally can get behind, especially if we do something really good like subsidize safe storage so that if you're a person who is of lesser means, but you still want to protect yourself with a firearm, you can figure out how to get a safe or something like that.

Anyway, that's so there are things that we can do. I think we know that outright bans one don't work and are hard to pass and things like magazine capacity things. things, the enforcement level becomes difficult. And a good example of that is in New Mexico, we did pass a red flag law a number of years ago. And, you know, I've heard I know you've talked about red flag laws in the past. And, you know, and we had what a lot of states have had, which is that a number of sheriffs in conservative counties just very publicly said out loud that they weren't going to enforce it. And sure enough, you know, last year during the summer, when we hit the two year mark of the lobbying into effect, it had been used less than a dozen times statewide. And so. Yeah, I mean, and one of the one of the things that's of obvious concern is if you have a lot of people living in these conservative areas where the sheriffs aren't enforcing the laws, they effectively have the ability to take the

firearms they can acquire there to the areas that have maybe more restrictive gun control, where there are elected Democrats and then shoot up their houses. Yeah, I think kind of outside of that, I'm wondering. So and obviously, we're still looking at the fallout of this. There's still quite a bit we don't know. I don't think there's a lot of context on how Pena found these men that he hired. Although I am interested in that. I think it'll be worth learning. Is there kind of a lessons learned that you're going through with this here?

Has this altered at all kind of going forward, how you think you might respond or your community might respond the next time something like this occurs? yeah i mean i think there's a couple i mean actually one of the things you just said is that we don't necessarily know how we found these guys and and that's true because we still don't know the names of some of them but the one the one man we do know um was one of was a was a person who donated money to him while while he was running because because again remember this this is a this was a man who was running for office last year and lost three to one um and and yeah and so this this one accomplice whose name we have jose trujillo donated to him and um they're very you know they're they're clearly um they clearly know

each other and have some sort of a connection there but i think what's worth noting is that going down that path right so when i looked up that guy i found the the political donation from last year and while i was there looking at political donations i just happened to look at all the other names which is how i found the other, you know, the name of the other man who has this connection to him, Fletcher, and Michael Fletcher, right. And that guy, two years ago, during the, you know, the 2020 protests, drove a car through a crowd of protesters and um thanks to some amazing um you know anti-fascist organizers here in new mexico they were able to identify him even though the cops never did anything about it and so i think that if if there's going to be lessons learned here

it's that these people have been showing their true colors for a long time and um there's if if if we're going to have police in this world we live in and we're going to ask them to quote unquote keep us safe uh then they have to do their job and they have to follow up with with things like you know somebody driving through a crowd of people the video is is on our twitter thread it's very scary i mean i know people have seen it all over the country it wasn't just unique to new mexico but um anyway that driving through a crowd of people. The video is on our Twitter thread. It's very scary. I mean, I know people have seen it all over the country. It wasn't just unique to New Mexico. But anyway, that guy was Pena's third highest donor and is a young man. His listed profession is security guard. And the other guy, Jose Trujillo, is listed as a cashier. So there's a lot of

questions about how did these young men have so much money with jobs that are, you know, you don't necessarily have a lot of money lying around if you're a cashier, a security guard, at least at least not to donate to political candidates. Back when I had jobs like that, I didn't anyway. And especially then also for all the guns they have. Right. Like there's pictures of these guys with a table full of Glocks and mags, and that stuff is not cheap. These people were known to law enforcement one way or the other because, again, Peña was a felon. And I want to be clear, he was able to run in New Mexico because in new mexico we believe felons deserve a second chance for things like running for office in fact it'd be great someday to have somebody who's maybe got that life experience to become a legislator obviously there are circumstances like maybe this one that prove that uh people haven't you know turned around from whatever life they were

leading beforehand but we're also but we're also not here excluding people from being, um, being a felon does not make you a bad person. That's what I'm really trying to say here. But a felon who has a history like this, and then has clearly demonstrated a will towards violence and hangs out with violent people. Um,

maybe there should be some things done to keep an eye on those people. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead,

now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things

to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough, so join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. This is one of those situations that there's a number of different solutions to or i think things that will will lead to solutions but it's also it's much more muddled than people would like it to be um i i think i i tend to think that from the perspective of like people who are activists who are members of the community,

one of the better things that we can do is keep an eye as y'all do on who's doing what, like, when you have people who are donating to one of these right wing fascist kind of candidates, when they're saying certain things on social media, or the candidate saying so things on social media that are seen as incitements to violence, like keeping those people on your radar is is is useful. And keeping, you know, as you did being able to kind of document, once somebody actually starts acting, hey, this person has has made further threats in the past. These are groups of people that might be at risk from them, we know this person, hey, this person has made further threats in the past. These are groups of people that might be at risk from them. We know this person, like, here's evidence that this

person is and has been a threat. That's all really useful. The question is always is like, how do we actually stop these people before they carry out violence? And this is a question that, to be certain, law enforcement in the state don't have very good answers for because they only kind of come in and take action after the attacks have started. We just got lucky in this case that nobody was hurt or killed. You know, there have been a couple of mass shootings averted as a result of anti-fascists finding someone who was making threats, uh, who had firearms and in some cases like was not legally supposed to have them

and making that public ahead of time. Um, but more often than not, it's sort of this case as it, as it was with Pena, where we're the name comes out, we realize who it was. And it's like,

yeah, we had, we had this guy documented. We knew this dude was a threat. And I, I think that's the, that is still kind of the, the thing that we don't have a good answer to is, is what is the actual, how do you, how do you actually take action to stop these people from carrying out the attacks? Because obviously there's a thousand different legal issues with that. There's a number thousand different legal issues with that

there's a number of different moral issues with that because for every guy like pina who talked about carrying out attacks and then attacked people there's a couple of dozen who talk about shit like this and don't do anything but um i don't know this is this is something that i think that i think has to be answered and it's not not on, you know, you specifically or New Mexico activist community to figure it out. But it is, it is like, this is a big part of the struggle, I think,

because the, the, the cops and the state will do the thing that they do, which is when there are bodies or when there's bullet casings on the ground, generally, eventually someone will get arrested. Not always,

not necessarily even the vast majority of the time again nobody's caught the fuckers who were blowing up power stations in north carolina right but you know that so i think the question for us that and i'm sorry folks i'm not going to be i'm not going to be saying here's how we solve the problem of armed right-wingers carrying out attacks on people is how do we, how do we get from knowing who's a threat to stopping them effect, effectively stopping them from carrying out actual attacks. And that is, you know, as our years have led, uh, if that is what we're in and, and boy, things like this make me think that that's a reasonable way to describe the present political situation in the United States.

This is something we're going to have to answer. And obviously, I've asked you kind of your lessons on it. I don't think there's much more to say at the moment, but this is the question, right? It's a question we ask ourselves, or I know people are asking themselves up in Portland. The guy who carried out an attack almost exactly a year ago at a protest in Portland had a long history of making threats online. And now one person's dead and others paralyzed. Several more have been injured. This is a tough question.

have been injured. This is a tough question. And it's not one that I think just kind of raw ideology actually gives us a very good answer on. Because there's the emotionally satisfying answer, which is like, well, we just need to get some folks together and go like, fuck these people up. And it's like, well, you can't. That's actually not a realistic solution. Because number one, there's so many people making these threats like you don't actually have the the the the human bandwidth to

for that to be realistic outside of the fact that those people would be destroying their lives and throwing themselves into the maw of the state to do it so this is this is a toughie um i i i do there's i mean there's one there's one part of this that I think New Mexico can can offer some some. I don't know. There's one thing we got right. And I don't know if if, you know, everybody out there is familiar with the name Coy Griffin or his organization Cowboys for Trump. But during the lead up to the 2020 election, this guy kind of made a name for himself. the lead up to the 2020 election this guy kind of made a name for himself uh he went around the country on horseback with a bunch of dudes and they all dressed up like larping as cowboys um most of them are not and um and you know they had american flags and they yeah literally called

cowboys for trump this guy was a seated county commissioner in Otero County here in New Mexico, and he went to January 6th and he was the first convicted person from the January 6th fallout. And he lost his seat in Otero County, which is like the smallest amount of thing, right? should have been locked up but um but one of the things that is frustrating but also maybe good is that you know through my work doing what i do i had been documenting this man for years because he'd been saying all kinds of crazy shit um sometime in in 2019 i think or maybe it was 2020 he like went up on top of a mountain to pray this is his words and recorded himself on a facebook live and like literally said that black people should go back to africa and like this this video was on his facebook and i mean it had been out for days and nobody said anything about it anywhere until i clipped it and put it on twitter you know i took

i took away the 40 minutes of other weird shit he said and i put that thing out into the world and said this man deserves to be like under so much scrutiny it's ridiculous and then of course it got press and then of course he came under fire and then a couple people were paying attention so then when he went to january 6th and again on a live video, because people can't stop Instagramming their crimes, he said he was taking all of his guns and going to meet his, you know, homies in,

in Washington. And so he got arrested. He got arrested there. He was one of the few people who got arrested like on the ground that day because the FBI and the secret service were already looking for him. Because again, somebody else had been out loud about saying, uh, this man literally just said he's taking guns to DC. us were already looking for him because again somebody else had been out loud about saying uh

this man literally just said he's taking guns to dc is somebody please gonna do something about this so i don't know it wasn't great and i feel like more could have been done and again fortunately no one got hurt i mean i guess people did if you want to take the whole of january 6th into into um the consideration yeah but i guess i guess my point is is that it it's sort of just a constant vigilism right it's like you just have to be and it's not you know and obviously one person can't do it but you have to have groups of people that do it i mean i'm i'm one guy who works with an organization of people and we work on a number of policy things in the state and again i don't necessarily do this all the time but i also know that there's a number of amazing people especially in otero county which is a very conservative county but there's a number of amazing people who do really hard work

and they show up at county commission meetings and they get thrown out and they go to school board meetings and they get thrown out but they go and they document it and they tweet and they tick tock. And, and it's, it's, you know, it's that work that puts the word out from these little tiny places. You know, the last time I was on the show, Robert, we were talking about the school board stuff here in Las Cruces and the right wing chuds that had showed up to that. And, you know, it's the same thing, right? It's like, you don't, I mean, you can't do it alone, but it doesn't take that many people to show up. And as you know, and once you once you show them that you're not afraid and that there's more of us than there are of them, they tend to slink away. And I think that there's I think that there's value in that.

And there's you know, it's not the answer that you're talking about, but there's there's a modicum of hope there worth remembering. Yeah, I think that's a really good point.'s all those are all really good points um well lucas i think that more or less covers what we came to talk about today did you have anything else you wanted uh you wanted to say to the audience before we kind of roll out of here anything you wanted to plug place you want to well yeah i mean i yeah i'd just like to say that, you know, I the number one donor to this guy's campaign is a corporation called Jalapeno Corporation. It's owned by a billionaire named Harvey Yates. He's part of the family that discovered oil in the state of New Mexico. New Mexico is the second largest producer of oil in the United States.

Harvey Yates donated to every Republican candidate this cycle. And I think that what I want to just say out loud, because again, my job is normally, I talk about energy issues, is that on the one hand, we have questions about where some of these young men who have cashier jobs and security guard jobs, where they came up with $4,000 to donate to a political candidate over the course of a few months. It's not unsurprising that an oil corporation donated $5,000, right? is that you know these these mega corporations of all stripes but especially oil and gas um are the backbone of the political movement that we are talking about you know even if we're sort of beating around the bush right there's there's one side here that is dominated very heavily by this far-right extremism and they and they, and the, their funders treat

them all the same, right? Like oil and gas companies don't care if you're a quote unquote moderate Republican or a hardcore right-wing MAGA guy or a literal Nazi, they just want somebody who's going to like get in there and, you know, give them tax subsidies. And, you know, and I just, the fight over energy issues in this country is often framed around climate change, as it should be, because I mean, obviously, the climate crisis is something we can't ignore. But it's so much worse than that. And, you know, we could do a whole other thing about that someday. But I just it's just so important. I can't let it go. You know, looking looking at this at this what I'm going to call a domestic terrorist's donation sheet, you know, and seeing that the number one, you know, his number one donor was this oil and gas guy.

Like, it's just not a coincidence. It really isn't. And it's it's worth remembering. So that's, that's the last thing I want to plug or last thing I want to say in terms of plugs, you can find me on Twitter. I'm just Lucas E Herndon.

And if you are interested in New Mexico politics things, you can follow us now at progress. Now I'm in. Awesome. Well, you cannot find me there, but you can find me elsewhere. You'll figure it out.

Thank you, Lucas. This has been really, I mean, good is a weird word, but I appreciate it. Yeah, that's what happened last time, too. Well, I'm sure we'll have you back on in the near future, and we will be back tomorrow with some more shit that is hopefully fun, fun stuff, maybe fun stuff. I always get the episodes where it's not. It could happen here. It's it did happen here. Yeah.

A thing has occurred. Oh, no. All right. Thanks, Robert. Thank you. It could happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. And keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals.

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